Badger football game days may be synonymous with tailgating, but a new “Show and Blow” program through the Offices of the Dean of Students may end some students’ early-morning drinking parties.

The program, which will launch at Saturday night’s Big Ten opener against Iowa, requires students with a previous ejection or citation at a football game to blow into a Portable Breathalyzer Test before the game to prove their sobriety.

“This will be for very specific students who at previous games pass through the police center [at Camp Randall], and if students were issued an underage alcohol citation, they would have to come and blow a .000,” said Kevin Helmkamp, an associate dean in the Office of the Dean of Students, who expects the PBTs to be administered at the student entrance.

“For students that are of age and either passed through the center or were simply ejected from a previous game, they would have to blow a .08 or lower,” he added.

According to Ervin Cox, an assistant dean in the Office of the Dean of Students, a trial program was established a few years ago with “individual students who exhibited extreme intoxication at football games.”

Due to positive feedback from those individual students, Cox said the university’s Alcohol Task Force pushed to expand the program.

“In many respects the program is designed for students to have a chance to show us that they can take responsibility for their behavior at football games,” Helmkamp said. “This is a program that says, ‘OK, it’s happened once. Learn from it, come back, enjoy the games—but with limitations.’”

Campus officials said they are also expecting students to be responsible in reporting to the PBT tables.

“We trust students are going to be honorable,” Cox said, adding that e-mails will be sent to effected students detailing the Show and Blow procedure.

“They’ll also understand that failure to stop by … will potentially have severe consequences for them,” Helmkamp said. Cox said entrance to the game would be prohibited and further implications may be possible if students do not show up sober.

Campus officials will start the PBT process 45 minutes before kickoff so students can get to their seats to cheer on the football team as players run out of the tunnel.

“The football team really likes the student section full, and it’s somewhat embarrassing that half of it’s not full yet [by kickoff],” he said.

The Show and Blow policy is not to be confused with the UW Athletic Department’s Ticket Revocation Policy implemented during the 2006-’07 football season.

According to the revocation policy, students face the risk of losing their current season tickets or ability to buy future season tickets due to severe conduct within or repeated ejections from any UW-Madison Athletic facility.

Although football games statistically have the largest number of student ejections, Cox said the police have issued concerns about hockey. There are no plans to expand the Show and Blow policy to other sports at this time.

UW Police Lt. Bill Larson said UWPD has planned for high numbers of citations this Saturday by asking other agencies for extra help.

“That game will be busier just because it is a night game and people will be more intoxicated,” he said.

He said police are able to issue citations based on behavior.

“If somebody is stumbling up the stairs, they are vomiting on the concourse—those are the ones we end up citing,” Larson said.

Cox said he wants students to “have fun, be safe, be responsible and represent responsibly.”